ECN, KNMI (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) and Whiffle are combining their expertise in the DOWA (Dutch Offshore Wind Atlas) project that was launched in June 2017 and will last until December 2019.
KNMI will bring its specialist wind climate knowledge and particularly the calculation of mean wind speeds and extremes with the help of weather models, Whiffle has developed software that can calculate local wind information at a very high resolution and ECN has specific knowledge of the wind conditions affecting wind turbines and wind farms.
As part of the DOWA project, the existing KNMI North Sea Wind (KNW) atlas cataloguing wind information up to an altitude of 200 metres will be extended to include information from 2014 until now, enabling the dataset to be used to predict wind energy production in wind farms now in the planning phase. In addition, a new atlas will be compiled, known as the Dutch Offshore Wind Atlas (DOWA). The new atlas will more effectively chart changes in the wind within a 24-hour period (day/night) and provide wind information from layers of air at a higher altitude (600m). In addition, the Whiffle software makes it possible to extrapolate extremely accurate wind information from the information in the DOWA. The DOWA project will also focus on the wind in the lee of an individual wind turbine or complete wind farm.
